And I just don’t even understand who’s supposed to be the target, here. Anyone in a position to influence whether sites adopt HTML5 — the browser manufacturers and website developers — is obviously going to see right through this. (HTML5 has things that could be used to act just like browser cookies, only, um, more so! Scary! Also, somebody wrote a tech demo that combines all the other bits of browser code that can be used to act like cookies, half of which predate HTML5! Scary! Also, W3C stamp of authority lags behind real-world events! You don’t say!)

As for who’d be behind it, Adobe, I guess. Right? They’re the only ones who really stand to benefit at all if HTML5 somehow evaporated. But it’s kind of hard to picture some PR guy at Adobe calling up this New York Times reporter and saying, “hey, remember that article you wrote three weeks ago about security concerns with our product? Would you mind just doing a little search-and-replace on it and republishing it to be about HTML5 instead? Thanks!”

Because, really, if the best you’ve got about a competing technology is that it carries exactly the same potential for abuse as your own product… well, you haven’t got much, have you?